Carbon emissions is a grave problem with existing desalination infrastructure, but this seems something that can be solved. I'd expect desalination to be well suited for opportunistic use of solar or wind power. Build up reserves of clean water when it's sunny or windy, then deplete those reserves when cheap spare energy isn't available.

Of course this goes for new desalination plants. Whether there's political will to convert existing plants to non-fossil fuel sources is another matter. But at least from an engineering perspective there is a way forward.

What I get out of the article is that disposing of brine is an ecological hazard. This shouldn't really be a surprise since any engineering effort at large scale is going to have some kind of environmental impact, but this is a new consideration for those of us who don't work in the industry and hadn't thought too deeply about the process.